Best Game, Worst Game

[Salka]

Okay, Kenty was telling me about this game yesterday and I thought it sounded like fun. The other thread about Your Favourite Game prompted me to start this.

What's your favourite game? (or at least, just one of them)

What's your least favourite game (I mean one that you don't understand why people like and you think it's shit and undeserved of praise, not just plain SHIT games)

Then we pit those whose favourite games are someone elses least favourite games and vice versa, against each other in a violent and gorey argument-fight.

GO!!!!

Favourite game (at the moment): Final Fantasy (specifically VI for gba, but on my lovely DS)

Least favourite game: The Sims

Least favourite mum: yours

[Aussie Ben]

Following Yufster's in-depth set of rules and stuff, here I go:

(One of my) Favourite game(s): Tetrisphere

One of the official Tetris variants made for the Nintendo 64, I really liked this one. Basically, you have assorted familiar Tetris pieces on a sphere, and you have to clear tetrads to get to the centre of the sphere. Tasks are varying - sometimes you'll need to clear the bricks around a tower, sometimes you'll need to find hidden pictures on the sphere, sometimes you'll need to find pieces of the picture and then construct them. It was one of those games that was really great fun to play, I found.

Least Favourite game: Chrono Trigger

I've tried and tried and tried multiple times, but I simply cannot get into Square games. At all. I really don't understand the massive, obsessive frightening fangasms had over what is basically a very crude story with repetitive menu selections and making numbers go higher. I really did try with Chrono Trigger, but it was more of the same dull repetitive stuff to me. I'll take Terranigma or Illusion of Gaia over a SNES Square game any day, thanks.

The baffling thing about all this is that I can play Pokemon without any trouble. Maybe it's because it's designed for really young kids? (I don't mind if that's what it is.)

Least favourite mum: your mum's

[elmuerte]

(One of my) Favourite game(s): Anachronox

It has a great lengthy story which also develops over time. You will get to visit a large variety of worlds and there is quite some stuff going on besides the main story. The game is not just fighting, but has some detective parts too. And there is of course the humor.

Least Favourite game: Half Life 2

Well, it's an interesting FPS game. But it gets way more praise then I think it deserves. A lot of people even praise the story... what story!? The complete story of the game is not even 2 sheets of paper long (and that includes the unwritten part).

For the rest the game isn't very well balanced and doesn't progress in a nice fashion. It's like a couple of episodes, it's city -> boat -> buggy -> city.

For the rest the world isn't very interesting, no interesting areas. Well, ravenholm is a bit interesting. But everything is just way to staged.

It's just another FPS to me, not much special.

Least favourite mum: either Mrs Boll or Mrs Thombson

[miffy495]

(One of my) Favourite game(s): Rez

Fuck yes. There is a story, sure, but you need to look at the instructions to know that. This game is just such an amazingly pure and focused experience. The fact that I can beat it in about an hour if I want to actually doesn't detract from it. It's the perfect length for what it is, and the fact that it's so short means that I can always go back and replay it whenever I want without worrying about what new games I'm missing out on because I'm buried in the replay. Love this game.

Least Favourite game: Pikmin

Love the style. Dig the gameplay. Can't get enough of those cute little plant guys. What's to hate? The fact that the entire game is on a timer. I can't enjoy a game like that. Especially one with such a lush and interesting world. I can't explore. I need to find that next rocket part. DAMMIT WHERE'S THE ROCKET PART!?!? IT'S ALMOST SUNSET!! MOVE YOU LITTLE FLORAL BASTARDS MOVE!!! It infuriates me to see a game that's just so good in every other way have all the fun sucked out of it by one boneheaded gameplay mechanic. As such, what could easily have been one of my favourites drives me completely batshit crazy.

[SpiderMonkey]

Least Favourite game: Half Life 2

Well, it's an interesting FPS game. But it gets way more praise then I think it deserves. A lot of people even praise the story... what story!? The complete story of the game is not even 2 sheets of paper long (and that includes the unwritten part).

For the rest the game isn't very well balanced and doesn't progress in a nice fashion. It's like a couple of episodes, it's city -> boat -> buggy -> city.

For the rest the world isn't very interesting, no interesting areas. Well, ravenholm is a bit interesting. But everything is just way to staged.

It's just another FPS to me, not much special.

The storytelling is what is so worthy of praise. It's so tightly integrated into everything, right down to the placement of doorways to guarantee particular views as you enter particular areas. It's one of few games to genuinely show how you could tell a story in something approaching a natural language for games, rather than resorting to ripping off cinema constantly.

[Salka]

yesss FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!! :gaming:

[DanJW]

Okay, my two, chosen in the interest of dispute

A favourite = Counterstrike Source.

There. said it. But seriously, day to day, year on year, this is probably the game I play the most. It still looks fairly decent, especially the HDR maps, but most importantly it plays well. It rewards both skill and teamwork. It has many many options for tactics. Good quality ommunity content continues to appear, such as really proffessional maps and really clever UI ad-ins and server gadgets. And I play on a server that I love, with a bunch of regulars who are a lot of fun to joke around with.

A least favourite = Final Fantasy series,

mainly 7 because that gets the most love.

Can't stand it. Hardly played at all, besides Crystal Chronicles. I just find the whole thing a massive turn-off - mainly the worst UI in gaming (seriously, I've seen text-only games with better interfaces). But also the insipidness of it. Supposedly some of the best stories in gaming, they look to me like bloated cliché soap operas with added pretty lights. It's like watching Neighbours, performed by Poser models. And they have the audacity to call themselves RPGs! There's never been any less roleplay in a game! They're basically adventure games, only with more pointles numbers. The whole thing is based on Dungeons and Dragons but the actual gameplay has less personality than a 13 year old Dungeon Master with Aspergers. Fuck off Final Fantasy.

hahah that was fun

Favourite MILF = Yufster's

[elmuerte]

The storytelling is what is so worthy of praise. It's so tightly integrated into everything, right down to the placement of doorways to guarantee particular views as you enter particular areas. It's one of few games to genuinely show how you could tell a story in something approaching a natural language for games, rather than resorting to ripping off cinema constantly.

That's HL2:Ep1, that only works well when you have companions not when you're running around alone.

Unless you mean the area triggered monologues with some guy at a remote location that talks to you through a communication device of some sort.

Anyway... it was also done in Unreal 2 in some levels, for example in the level where you can to defend a piece of swamp (not a lot of non-enemy NPCs in that game).

It is interesting to have one of your companions tell a story about the area you're currently in, specially when it's done during interactions. It makes the world much more realistic. What would really be cool if during the dialog/monologue you were interrupted by some action after which it will continue.

"And then [...] ..."

"What the hell was that?"

[monsters attack]

"That was a close one. Now what was I saying before?... Oh right. ..."

[brkl]

Storytelling goes far beyond people talking, elmuerte.

[DanJW]

Yeah, I've said it before, but I see HL2 as a great example of story telling through environment. What some people feel is missing is exposition.

[elmuerte]

Storytelling goes far beyond people talking, elmuerte.

Ok, I get that, but I still don't see where HL2 excels where others don't.

Maybe if you could point out some parts in HL2.

(note: I don't own HL2, and the flat mate that did moved a while ago, so I can't replay certain parts).

[lobotomy42]

Least Favourite game: Pikmin

Love the style. Dig the gameplay. Can't get enough of those cute little plant guys. What's to hate? The fact that the entire game is on a timer. I can't enjoy a game like that. Especially one with such a lush and interesting world. I can't explore. I need to find that next rocket part. DAMMIT WHERE'S THE ROCKET PART!?!? IT'S ALMOST SUNSET!! MOVE YOU LITTLE FLORAL BASTARDS MOVE!!! It infuriates me to see a game that's just so good in every other way have all the fun sucked out of it by one boneheaded gameplay mechanic. As such, what could easily have been one of my favourites drives me completely batshit crazy.

What? What?!? The timer is what makes this game work! If there wasn't a timer, you'd just stock up on Pikmin for a few days before you ever go out, and then tear through the enemies. Then stock up, and repeat. It would be stupid!

They took the timer out of the second game, and replaced it with dungeon-crawls. The whole game became killing other creatures. No puzzle solving, no exploration - because all that stuff becomes easy if you aren't racing against the clock. Just lots and lots of enemies to fight, and it was totally boring. (Although the item gallery was pretty neat.)

The first Pikmin was SO GOOD. Everyone hated the timer, it seems, except poor old me...

[SpiderMonkey]

What? What?!? The timer is what makes this game work! If there wasn't a timer, you'd just stock up on Pikmin for a few days before you ever go out, and then tear through the enemies. Then stock up, and repeat. It would be stupid!

I liked the timer. I can see why others didn't. I thought it did a great job of hiding the edges of the world. Without it, it would've been immersion-destroyingly obvious that you were just exploring a bunch of levels, but with it, it just about felt like you were exploring different parts of a planet's surface. There was always that mystique of what's 'just around the corner', to use a juicy cliché. (I haven't played the second one yet, so it's possible they achieved this feeling without it.)

(As an added thought, I'd love to know how many people were caught out by the timer and had it ruin their game, versus how many people just didn't like feeling rushed. I would bet heavily on the latter.)

[miffy495]

I think Pikmin would work very well if the timer were replaced with something representative of time, but not actually restricting the gameplay. During level X, you'd only have enough time to grow 40 Pikmin and those would be all you could use to make it through, or something of the like. It'd keep the challenge, but you'd also have the opportunity to explore the world. If they removed the timer in Pikmin 2, I may have to pick it up. As I said, that was really all I didn't like, but it was enough to ruin it for me. Sounds like Pikmin 2 would be perfect as long as everything else was intact.

And yeah, I got caught out by it. I'd spend a day exploring the wrong part of the damned map to find something, or waste a day in an area where I wasn't equipped to reach the rocket piece, or whatever. It got to the point where it became apparent that I could not win the game, so I went and played something else that didn't feel arbitrarily restricting.